


Sketch

by bjfic_archivist



Category: Queer as Folk (US)
Genre: Angst, Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-08-27
Updated: 2004-08-27
Packaged: 2018-12-27 09:44:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12078558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bjfic_archivist/pseuds/bjfic_archivist
Summary: Itâ€™s all there, laying right off the edge of a crumpled page.





	Sketch

**Author's Note:**

> Note from IrishCaelan, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [The Brian/Justin Fanfiction Archive](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Brian_Justin_Fanfiction_Archive). To preserve the archive, I began importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in September 2017. I posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [The Brian/Justin Fanfiction Archive collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/bjfic/profile).

There are some things that Justin tries to sketch that he just _can’t_. (Three things, to be exact. He made a list.)

It’s not because of his gimp hand, although that certainly doesn’t help. It’s because he wants to draw these things exactly, perfectly, no room for interpretation, and Justin is a good artist, a damn good artist, but not _that_ good. 

Even if he knows exactly where the lines should go, they’re not going to go exactly where they should be. Art is imperfect. It’s representational. Justin knows this. 

The closest thing to his sketches that he can find is _memory_. Sound, feel, taste, emotion, gesture. It’s all there, laying right off the edge of a crumpled page.

He wants to draw Brian’s hands, the shape of his body. The sharpness of a blade, curling slowly and carefully around the fresh green curve of an apple. He remembers how he had frozen that image in his mind, thinking, _years from now, I will know that this is what gave me hope. This._

And Brian’s hands still give Justin hope, every day, every night, whenever Brian touches him.

Justin wants to draw his mother smiling, with that surprised look on her face whenever he gets her to laugh at something. The motion of her shoulders straightening, head tilted back slightly, something inside her opening up.

And – something else, something that he won’t ever name. Justin knows it’s sick, twisted. But sometimes he needs to draw something that _hurts_. He doodles on napkins, on the corners of his sketchpad, on nothing. He draws Chris Hobbes’ face before the swing. The only fucking thing he can remember of that night.

It’s so unfair. It’s the thing that pisses him off most about the bashing. That there were so many wonderful, glorious things that happened to him that year, and instead of being able to remember all of them clearly, his mind gives him a guilt complex, his mind starts saying _yes, but you did instigate it_ , et fucking cetera. His memory jumps from action to consequence.

Action. He remembers cleaning up the tool shed, all young and cocky. His right hand, his drawing hand, and the exact pressure and speed of stroke that he used to sketch out Chris Hobbes’s fear. Justin remembers the rasp of fabric against his knuckles, rough khaki and a sudden jerk, the smell of sweat.

And then yeah, Chris Hobbes tried to make his life hell after that, but it didn’t work, it _didn’t work_ , and Justin was learning and moving and celebrating and fucking and getting in trouble and dancing all hot against someone, and _knowing_ who he was, and he’s only just now getting that certainty back –

Fuck, it was just a hand job. Fabric and a zipper yanked down. It wasn’t worth being – 

But there were the consequences anyway. Triggered. Asking for it. Fucking _provoked_ him, they said.

Darkness, Brian’s voice hoarse and desperate like Justin’s never heard it before or since. A turn, just enough, not enough, just right – not even allowed a split second of realization, and then - 

A sudden collision from which he’s never heard the sound.

If Justin tried to draw it, this _thing_ , and he has, it would only be angry black lines. His pencil always dug into the pages and tore holes. And maybe that’s fucking representational enough.

_Shit._ It’s not worth it.

He just wants to be able to draw Brian’s hope, and his mother’s laugh. That’s all.


End file.
